VMtoday

VMware News, Views, and How-To's from vExpert Josh Townsend

You are here: Home / My Resume

My Resume

JOSHUA R. TOWNSEND
20380 Altavista Way, Ashburn, VA 20147
703-201-6911
joshuatownsend@gmail.com

Virtualization Evangelist Cloud Architect Team Leader VMware vExpert

A technology leader with 16 years of hands-on experience in VMware virtualization, storage design, Microsoft technologies and network infrastructure. I bring an innovative and pragmatic approach to analyzing complex business needs, enabling me to conceptualize, design and implement cutting edge solutions based on the latest virtualization, storage, and cloud technologies.  My community-focused involvement allows me to effectively share my passion for virtualization and cloud technologies with peers, partners, customers through social media engagement, public speaking at industry events, and through my writing and sharing of resources on my personal site, VMtoday.com.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Sr. Technical Marketing Manager – SDDC – VMware, Palo Alto, CA (Remote)                   2013 – Present

Responsible for the development of best practices, reference architectures, technical presentations, demos and videos as well as evaluation guides to empower VMware’s field, partners and customers in sales, evaluation and implementation of VMware vCloud Suite technologies. Acting project manager for the VMware Product Walkthrough site (VMware Product Walkthroughs), VMware Mobile Knowledge Portal app, briefing center Kiosks and SDDC field enablement materials. Key deliverables to date include authorship of the ‘Virtualization 2.0 for Dummies‘ book, authorship of ‘VMware Software-Defined Data Center Capabilities and Outcomes‘ whitepaper, worldwide sales training for VMWare IT Outcomes, and numerous product walkthroughs. Other duties include:

  • Act as a vCloud Suite expert and evangelist, who is capable of articulating and demonstrating the important role vCloud Suite plays in customer environments.
  • Collaboration with the Product Management and Product Marketing teams who are responsible for the vCloud Suite within within VMware technologies and solutions as well as the positioning and the marketing of them.
  • Educating customers and internal staff on VMware products offerings and best practices for combining solutions to create private and hybrid clouds.
  • Collaboration with our Field Organization to ensure they are empowered to drive and enable our customers to adopt VMware technologies and solutions.

Virtualization Practice Manager – Clearpath Solutions Group, Herndon, VA                   2012 – 2013

Responsible for ensuring technical excellence in all things VMware across sales, marketing, and professional services efforts.  As the lead SME for VMware and cloud technologies, I am a technical enabler, evangelist, and leader to Clearpath’s outstanding team of consultants and engineers as well as customers in Washington DC metro area, Baltimore, Boston, and Atlanta.  Specific accomplishments include:

  • Determining customer requirements and designing VMware-based solutions architectures spanning VMware’s product portfolio from the vCloud Suite to the Horizon Suite to meet the functional and business requirements of a range clients of various sizes and across verticals.
  • Developing technical marketing collateral, including product and services slicks, sample service offerings SOWs, and technical presentations for customer briefings, industry events, and publishing on corporate blog.
  • Educating customers and internal staff on VMware products offerings and best practices for combining solutions to create private and hybrid clouds.
  • Mentoring and providing quality assurance oversight to professional services engineers during the course of technical engagements to ensure that VMware solutions were delivered in accordance with best practices and professionalism.
  • Performed hands-on technical implementation, troubleshooting, and remediation on complex client projects requiring high-touch or strategic vision.

IT Manager, Virtualization Practice Lead – Tiber Creek Consulting, Fairfax, VA                   2009 – 2012

While IT Manager and Virtualization Practice Lead at Tiber Creek Consulting I architected, implemented and maintained a 150-server, 100% virtualized environment supporting Exchange, SQL, SharePoint, Active Directory, and a mixed Microsoft and Adobe development environment.  Oversaw operation of, and provided consultative architecture, systems management, and troubleshooting support to, our Department of Defense clients environments in the Pentagon and National Guard Bureau running VMware-virtualized OLTP and OLAP SQL workloads, web portals, and data analysis environments.

Principal Virtualization Consultant – IronBrick Associates, Vienna, VA                               2008 – 2009

Planned, designed and implemented enterprise solutions involving VMware, NetApp, and Microsoft Technologies. Experience with the design, architecture and implementation of Virtual Infrastructure environments using VMware VI, Virtual Center, Lab Manager, DRS and HA. Designed and Implemented Microsoft Active Directory Environments. Experienced in Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL and Microsoft Share Point implementations and migrations. Hands on experience with iSCSI, NFS and Fibre Channel protocols on NetApp storage.

Global IT Manager – Approva Corporation, Reston, VA                                                        2005 – 2008

While IT Manager at Approva, I led an enterprise-wide virtualization effort, overseeing and personally completing vendor/hardware qualifications, architecture/design, installation, configuration, migration and documentation.  Reduced the company’s server hardware footprint by 60% leading to savings in power and cooling.  Leveraged highly available VMware Virtual Infrastructure (VI3) environment to improve server availability, reduce workload for IT staff, and automate server deployment for various business units.  Environment supported both production and development environments containing hundreds of servers running SQL, IIS, Exchange, SharePoint, SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, and Approva’s BizRights software.

Sr. Network Engineer – NetCentrics Corporation, Vienna, VA                                              2002 – 2005

Provided day-to-day support, training, and technology implementation as well as long-term project management for small to medium sized corporate networks. Conceptualized and implemented systems upgrades. Worked with clients to analyze current network needs and identify areas in need of improvement. Researched and deployed innovative usage of technology to improve client productivity and efficiency. Managed team of help desk technicians and network engineers to meet needs of customers. Drafted technical documentation on projects, specifications, solutions and problems.

TECHNICAL SKILLS & EXPERIENCE

Virtualization & Enterprise Storage Design and Implementation

VMware vSphere architecture, implementation and support for commercial and government clients utilizing best practices for availability, reliability, and performance of compute, network, and storage resources to achieve dense virtualization ratios while maintaining SLAs and surpassing disaster recovery RTO/RPO’s.  Specific experience includes:

  • Architecture, design, install, configure VMware ESX, ESXi, within VI3, vSphere 4 and vSphere 5 environments with VirtualCenter management, LabManager, vCloud Director, Consolidated Backup, DRS, HA, DPM, vMotion, VMware Data Recovery, VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), vCenter Operations Manager, Horizon Workspace, Horizon Mirage, ThinApp and VMware View desktop virtualization infrastructure (VDI).
  • Build, configure and deploy VMs and templates. Completed Physical-to-Virtual (P2V), Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) and Virtual-to-Physical (V2P) migration of Windows NT, 2000, 2003, 2008, and 2012 as well as Linux servers from VMware, Hyper-V, Xen and legacy hardware.
  • Architect, Design and implement EMC Clariion (CX, CX3, and CX4) SAN environments to ensure high availability and acceptable performance characteristics for VMware vSphere and SAN-backed applications.  Experience with architecture, implementation and administration of NetApp FAS/V-Series, IBM DS-series, and Dell MD-series storage arrays.
  • Hands on experience in iSCSI, NFS, and Fiber Channel protocols, Fiber Channel cabling, switching, and zoning.
  • Analyze and troubleshoot on an advanced level, performance of SAN-backed VMware ESX infrastructure to determine proper allocation of resources to a multi-department user population with widely varying needs.
  • Customize layer 2 and layer 3 networking between VMware, networking components and storage for high availability and maximum performance.
  • Develop, test, and maintain a disaster recovery plan for critical VMs and application data.
  • Experience with 3rd party solutions in VMware environments including Veeam, Zerto, EMC Replication Manager, Symantec, TrendMicro, Liquidware Labs, and Cisco.
  • Design and deploy Amazon Web Services, including EC2, S3, CloudFront, Glacier, Auto Scaling, CloudWatch, SES, RDS, Route 53, IAM, and ElastiCache.

Network Infrastructure Design and Maintenance

Responsible for maintaining IT infrastructure including server hardware, VMware environment, data storage, switching and routing, backups, email, firewall, spam filtering, AV, VPN, mobile devices, VOIP systems, network monitoring, and all Microsoft technologies.

Identified need for and managed data center expansion including procurement, implementation and rollout of new physical plant utilizing APC In-Row Cooling; APC Power Distribution (PDU); APC Symmetra UPS; APC InfraStruXure Central; NetBotz environmental monitoring modules.

Server performance analysis and performance tuning, including SQL server workloads running both transactional and analytical data warehouses in an enterprise environment.

Lead design, deployment, and maintenance of a broad range of Microsoft technologies including: Windows Server 2000, 2003, 2008, 2008 R2; Exchange Server 2003 & 2007; SharePoint Server 2003, 2007, 2010; Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2004, 2006; SQL Server 2000, 2005, 2008; Windows Server Update Services (WSUS); DNS; WINS; DHCP; Active Directory; Group Policy Design and Implementation; IIS; and Terminal Services Gateway, Remote Desktop Services.

Responsible for design, implementation and maintenance of Dell & HP servers and storage hardware, IBM BladeCenter servers, Cisco routing and Catalyst switching, Cisco PIX & ASA firewalls, Cisco VPN, Symantec Backup Exec, Symantec AntiVirus, Spam and AV filtering, Blackberry Enterprise Server, GFI FaxMaker, SalesForce.com.  Dell Open Manage, HP Insight Manager, What’s Up Gold Network Monitor, ADSIedit, Replmon, Repadmin, DCDiag, NetDiag; Active Directory Sites and Services, Active Directory Users and Computers, Ethereal,  WireShark, PRTG, MRTG, Nagios, Cacti, LANSweeper; SolarWinds IPMonitor; OpManager, Cisco IOS, Cisco PDM/ASDM, Remote Desktop Connection, VNC, ping, tracert, telnet.  Hands on experience with DSL, T1, PRI, POTS, Metro Ethernet, Cisco Unified Communications/Call Manager Business Edition, Avaya IP Office, Fax, & VoIP.

Manage PC and laptop support, implement service desk best practices.  Optimize Windows desktop deployment by leveraging the latest deployment automation technologies from Microsoft.

IT MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE

Restructured geographically diverse IT groups into a global team to increase efficiency and improve customer satisfaction.  Rebuilt team from ground-up, hiring and equipping personnel for the challenges of a rapidly growing infrastructure and increased demands from multiple business units.  Completed interviews, personnel reviews, and salary reviews.

Standardized network management and monitoring tools across the organization to provide real-time alerting leading to greater uptime and increased security.   Drafted and implemented policies and procedures regarding network equipment, maintenance, and monitoring.

Reduced corporate communications costs by 40% through effective vendor management, contract negotiations and convergence of technical solutions.

Developed and managed a $1million budget for global IT department.

Personally led the conversion of an unstructured helpdesk to a global service desk through implementation of a ticketing system and industry best practice resulting in increased service levels, reduced resolution time, and tracking of key metrics.  Analyzed metrics to increase service offerings and automate recurring tasks.

Increased security, stability, and recoverability of the corporate network through implementation and ownership of all IT policies including security, backup, disaster recovery planning and compliance.  Served as an advisor to executive staff on information security practices and procedures.

Estimated project costs, prepared project plans and status reports.  Led the development of requisitions, bids, and specifications, and the negotiation, administration, and evaluation of contracts for equipment and services.

EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS

B.A., Political Science & International Relations

Messiah College, Grantham, PA

US Department of Defense Secret Security Clearance

VMware Certifications & Training

  • VMware Certified Professional on Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VCP3), vSphere 4 (VCP4), & vSphere 5 (VCP5)
  • VMware Certified Advanced Professional 5 – Datacenter Design (VCAP5-DCD)
  • VMware Certified Advanced Professional 5 – Desktop Design (VCAP5-DTD)
  • VMware Certified Professional – Desktop (VCP5-DT)
  • VMware Technical Sales Professional (VTSP)
  • VMware Sales Professional (VSP)
  • VMware View: Design Best Practices [v5.0]
  • VMware vSphere: Design Workshop [v4.0]
  • VMware Infrastructure 3: Install, Configure and Manage [v3.0]
  • VMware VMworld 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013: Attendee: Participated in VMware focused peer-to-peer sessions, technical breakouts and hands on labs.
  • VMware Partner Exchange (2012, 2013, 2014): Attendee: Participated in VMware focused peer-to-peer sessions, technical breakouts, hands on labs, and meetings with strategic business partners.
  • EMC World (2013): Attendee: Participated in EMC focused peer-to-peer sessions, technical breakouts and hands on labs.

Microsoft Certifications

  • Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP): Windows Server 2008: Enterprise Administrator
  • Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): Windows Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuration
  • Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure, Configuration
  • Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure, Configuration
  • Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer + Security (MCSE+Security); Windows Server 2003
  • Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA)
  • Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP)

CompTIA Certifications

  • CompTIA Security+ 2008

SAN/NAS Storage Training

  • Dell SAN Management Training: 3-day hands-on training for EMC Clariion SAN
  • NetApp SAN Implementation Workshop: 3-day hands-on training for NetApp FAS

Management Training

  • Skills for the Next Generation Manager course

Amazon Web Services Certifications

  • AWS Business Professional Accreditation
  • AWS Technical Professional Accreditation

Awards, Accolades, & Community Involvement

  • Volunteer Firefighter / Emergency Medical Responder at Ashburn Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department (AVFRD).
  • Rookie Firefighter of the Year – 2015 by AVFRD and Top Student in the Loudoun County Department of Fire, Rescue & Emergency Management Fall Fire School 2015.
  • Provide IT support to Ashburn Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department as acting IT Director.
  • Awarded 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 & 2014 VMware vExpert for going above and beyond to share my technical expertise and communicate the value of VMware and virtualization to my colleagues and community.
  • Awarded EMC Elect 2013 as Founding Member for contributions to the EMC community.  Also recognized as EMC Elect 2014.
  • Awarded Approva ‘Extra Mile Award’ for consistently providing timely and innovative solutions to challenges throughout the company.
  • Participated in corporate group at Approva charged with bringing innovative approach to improving corporate culture, employee morale, and global team integration.
  • Leader of the Washington DC Metro VMware User Group, responsible for planning user group meetings, coordinating vendor sponsorship, and engaging the VMware community through leading meetings, social networking, and personal interaction.
  • Volunteering time and technical expertise to various community programs, including network design and implementation for Helping Children Worldwide’s Connections for Hope Center in Herndon, VA.
  • English Teacher in Hanoi, Vietnam (1996) and Haiphong, Vietnam (1999)

PUBLISHED WORKS & PUBLIC SPEAKING

  • Blogger at https://vmtoday.com, sharing virtualization news, views, and lesson’s learned with the greater IT community.  Consistently voted in top virtualization blogs on vSphere-Land.
  • Blogger on Clearpath Solutions Group blog (https://blog.clearpathsg.com).
  • Presenter on technical virtualization-related topics at the Washington DC VMware User Group, Boston VMUG, Atlanta VMUG, Philadelphia VMUG, New England VTUG, and numerous Clearpath events and webinars.
  • Presenter on private cloud automation leveraging VMware, Cisco and EMC technologies at IDG IT Roadmap Conference and Expo in Washington DC (2012) and Boston, MA (2013).
  • Panelist on BrightTalk webinar ‘From Virtualization to Private Cloud: Taking the Next Step’ – November 2012.